What To Play With Your Kids?

20 March 2018

Play with your kids, hold their hands, cuddle and kiss them. Don’t leave them at the mercy of mobile phones, tablets or TV. As parents we seem to be abusing these gadgets for the sake of keeping our children occupied. It’s worse during winter time, when it’s cold, dark, gloomy, and there’s very little for kids to do outdoors.

If there are no alternative games you could offer to kids, then they have no other option but to spend all the time (possibly until bed time) playing computer games, mobile phones, or watching TV. How boring and poor use of their valuable time. As parents it’s our duty to come up with some novel play time ideas where they interact, communicate and learn new skills through play time.

Here are two games that can be played at home with your kids. So, let’s get started with the first one.

1. Increasing word count

Suitable age range: 10 and above.

Number of people needed to play the game: 2

Materials needed to play the game: No materials needed

How to play the game: You start with a three letter word, which can be an object, name or an animal. For example, the first player could start with the word “ape”, and say “you look like an ape”. Because the word “ape” finishes with the letter “e”, the opponent has to come up with a 4 letter word beginning with the letter “e” (either an object, name or an animal), e.g., “eggs”, and say “you look like a pile of eggs”. The word “eggs” ends with the letter “s”, so the next player needs to come up with a word starting with the letter “s”, but this time it has to be a five letter word. You may have noticed that each time the number of words increases in steps of one, i.e., the first player (say player 1) started with a 3 letter word (ape), then player 2 had to come up with a 4 letter word (eggs, as “e is the last letter in the word ape”), then back to player 1, who needs to figure out a 5 letter word (starting with the letter “s”, as “s” is the last letter, e.g., “shelf”), and so on. This game continues until you reach maximum number of letters in a word, and once you hit the maximum and nobody can come up with a word then the game comes to an end.

Benefits of this game on your child: ability to think fast, increased awareness of various vocabulary, and more importantly having fun with a twist of educational benefits.

2. Giraffe-Dwarf

Suitable age range: 4 and above.

Number of people needed to play the game: 2 or more people (the more the better)

Materials needed to play the game: No materials needed

How to play Giraffe-Dwarf: There should one person managing the game (let’s call this person the supervisor). All players initially stand up straight facing the supervisor. When the supervisor says “giraffe” everybody should stand up straight, whereas when he/she says “dwarf”, everybody should kneel on the floor. Note that the supervisor must follow the instructions too. Occasionally the supervisor should try to trick the players by doing the opposite of the instruction, for instance, kneel on the floor after saying “giraffe”. Whoever gets the instruction wrong leaves the game, and the winner is the last person who has managed to get all the instructions right.

Benefits of this game on your child: increased hard motor skills

Play GAMES with your kids, cuddle them, hold their hands, look at them in their eyes, and show your unconditional love.